My tinderbox lay behind the door. A candle–broken in the middle–was wedged behind the bunk. I shoved them in my pockets and went out to the narrow, tilting passageway.
To reach the lazarette, I had to pass the captain's cabin. The door was ajar, held by a hook and eye, and in the motion of the Dragon it rattled open and shut, with a sound like shaken bones. Through the gap I saw the captain, standing at a porthole. As I had seen him once before, he was talking to no one at all. Or talking to the ship. He touched the porthole gently, as he would a woman's face. So intent was he on this that I crept past without him seeing or hearing, and made my way to the lazarette.
The steering ropes were looser than before, and they filled the space with an eerie, almost human crying. The massive tiller groaned from side to side. I lit my candle and planted it with molten wax on the tiller and not the deck. The room still smelled of oil, and the planks were slick where my lantern had broken, what seemed like days before but was really only yesterday.
The candle, swinging with the tiller, made grotesquely whirling shadows. The ballast stones rumbled with a sound that made me think of ancient tombs. I sorted through the stack, growing more and more frantic the deeper I went. As I reached the timbers at the bottom, darkly stained with water, I knew the truth.
Larson's book was gone.
Chapter 13
A TALE OR MURDER
We came out of the fog a mile from shore, and the cliffs of Dover loomed ahead, huge and white, glowing in the sun. Along them lay a coil of smoke, a twisted rope woven from fires at the base and the brink.
“That's the signal,” said Dasher. “The revenue knows we're coming.”
Crowe wasn't half as calm. “Hard alee!” he shouted, and I watched the cliffs racing sideways past the bowsprit. The Dragon turned toward the sea. And again the fog enveloped us.
We sailed to the south for an hour or more, and then to the west. I'd lost all sense of where we were by the time the Dragon hove to at Crowe's command. The sails were lowered, and we drifted in the fog.
I sat on the capstan, mulling over my dilemma. If Crowe had the book, he wouldn't wait very long to settle the score between us. At every creak of wood, at every sound I heard, I expected Crowe to come out of the fog. And then I heard the hatch slide open. Footsteps came along the deck, and a man emerged from the gray.
“Lord love me,” he said, “I've never eaten a soup any thicker than this.”
It was Dasher. I felt almost happy to see him and shifted over to give him room on the capstan. He sat at my side and lit a pipe, and I watched the smoke swirl away to mix with the fog.
“How long will we wait here?” I asked.
“Until it's good and dark,” said Dasher.
“And then what?”
“We'll try the other place, of course. And if the revenue's there as well …”
From below us came a thump, and then another, muffled by the wood.
Dasher stamped his feet on the deck. He lowered his head and shouted at the planks, “Give it up, you old Haggis!” Then he grinned. “He's looking everywhere for that dead man's book.”
He crossed his legs and calmly smoked. Under his breath, he hummed his sad little song.
I stared at him as thoughts spun through my mind. Who had the book if it wasn't Crowe? Was it Dasher himself? Or was the book still among the ballast stones, so deep in the darkness that I'd somehow overlooked it?
“Did you search for it?” I asked him.
“Me?” He shook his head. “I'm not the one who wants it. Soon as we've got these barrels unloaded, I'm rid of this blasted boat.”
“You're going ashore?”
“Like a shot.” He swung out his arm with a squeaking of corks and pointed high to the west. “It's over the hills and home for old Dasher. Home to the hearth and the missus. And then, my friend, I'd say you're on your own.”
It seemed to me I was on my own already. But Dasher meant this well, and for a moment he leaned so close toward me I felt the corks against my ribs. “Listen,” he said. “Make a run for it. When you get your chance, slip away.”
“I can't swim,” I told him.
“Who can?” he asked. “No, you wait for the boats, you see. They'll come in a fleet, in a regular navy. And if you're quick about it, you can make off with one.”
“And what will become of the Dragon?”
Dasher shrugged. “The Haggis will do what he has to do. He'll take her out and sink her. But it will break his heart to see her go.”
I snorted. “He has no heart.”
“He does for the Dragon,” said Dasher. “And if he has to sink her, he'll kill you for it.” Then he told me a story as we drifted there, as the fog grew dark around us.
The Dragon had been built as a privateer, and Turner Crowe was the man to sail her, though he wasn't much older than I at the time. The shipwrights made her fast and sleek; armed with a dozen guns, she was set loose to prey like a wolf on the flocks of French ships. But on the day she was launched, there was an accident, and Crowe's own child was crushed below the ship. “Like a smear of jam,” said Dasher. “That's what he looked like. A smear of straw-berry jam.”
I remembered Larson telling me that. Or at least, in his mysterious way, he had hinted of it. “Death she'll bring you, and I'll promise you that. It's the way of a ship that wad christened with blood.”
“In the Dragon,” said Dasher, “Crowe rounded the Horn and sailed to the Indies. He filled the holds from the battered, smoking wrecks of merchantmen. And he came home a wealthy young man; he bought the Dragon for himself.”
“He was crazy,” said Dasher. “He thought his boy was sort of in the ship, a part of the ship. He thought he could hear the little bleeder knocking–tapping–on the hull.”
Again we heard thumps below us, and I nearly jolted from the capstan. Dasher laughed. “He went around talking to the boy, at night in his cabin.”
“I've seen that,” I said. I remembered the way his fingers had touched the bronze of the porthole, lingering at the hinges, as though stroking curls of hair.
“Then he'll never sink her,” I said.
“Except to save his neck,” said Dasher. “He's felt a touch of the noose already.”
“I've seen the scar.”
“But do you know what happened?” Dasher fiddled with his pipe as he began another story. “It went like this,” he said.
Crowe made a second voyage privateering, in the war against the colonies. Again he filled the hold. But this time, as he ran home in a gale, the Dragon strayed too close to France, and he was taken by a frigate west of Ushant. His crew was imprisoned to wait out the war, but Captain Crowe made a bargain with the French. He smuggled their spies across the Channel, right under the nose of the English.
“How he did it is a mystery,” said Dasher. “Some say he hid the men in barrels, others that he rowed them ashore at Sussex. You pays your money and you takes your choice, but I'd guess there was another way. I think the old fox has a lair down below, a secret compartment that he built from the start for his own little stash of plunder.” He smiled. “Oh, you have to admire the captain sometimes.”
My father, I remembered, had measured the Dragon's holds. Three times he had paced out their length and their breadth, puzzled because the schooner seemed smaller than he'd thought.
“Old Haggis saw peace coming and fled with the Dragon,” said Dasher. “He set off from Calais with a crew of four to bring one more spy across. But he came into Dover all by himself, standing there at the wheel. When the anchor went down in the harbor, he was the only man aboard. The first thing he did was sluice the decks, and the water came off her red as wine.”
“He murdered the crew?” I asked.
“They were French,” said Dasher. He put his pipe down and twiddled his mustache. “So the Haggis had the Dragon and once a smuggler, always a smuggler, or so they say. He took all his money and spent it on one enormous run. Tea, my friend: wishy-washy; maskin-pot. He fetched i
t over from Normandy–so much tea there was just a foot of freeboard board left, and that wooden dragon there was up to its eyes in the Channel. But the revenue were waiting – someone tipped them to it–and they found him off the marshes in the moonlight. Every bale and leaf was seized, and the Dragon too. Then they took Captain Crowe and they–”
“They hanged him,” said I. “The revenue.”
“The smugglers!” cried Dasher. “He made such a botch of the run that they hanged him right there. They sat him on a horse and tied his hands behind him. Round goes the noose. Cinch it tight. You never seen a man sit up so straight.”
Dasher spread his legs across the capstan. His chin high, his back stiff, he sat as though on horseback.
“Captain Crowe's glaring down at everyone; you'Ve seen the way he glares. His eyes, they burn. All these men down below him, they put the whips to that horse, and out she goes; she bolts. The captain drops like a rock.”
Dasher leapt to his feet, his hands at his throat. He tossed his head from side to side in a wild flurry of whiskers and hair. “He's kicking and he's gasping, and his eyes are big as an owl's. He's spinning round and round on the end of that rope, and the branch is bending down to touch his feet to the ground, then jerking him back in the air. Lord, he danced a fine little jig that night.” Dasher smiled. “And you know who cut him down? You know who saved him at just that moment?”
“You?” I asked.
“Dashing Tommy Dusker.” He laughed. “People talked of that for weeks and months, for miles and miles. You could go from Ramsgate round to Beachy Head, and every second man you'd meet would say, 'Oh, yes, I was there. I saw it happen. Dashing Tommy Dusker riding like a whirl-wind to save his captain.' ” He glowed as he told me this. “I should have left that rat to die. But oh, it must have been a fantastical sight. Lord love me, I wish I could have stood there and seen it myself. What a picture I must have been. What a trump!”
He sat on the capstan and scratched idly at the corks on his chest. “They'll write about it one day. They'll write books about me, and novels and plays. But it's books that I want. You never die if you're written up in books.”
It was nearly dark. At any minute we would set the sails and go on to the end of our journey. And I still didn't know whom to trust, or who it was that held the dead man's book.
“How well do you know Mathew and Harry?” I asked. “I suppose you're all as thick as thieves.”
“A funny thing,” said Dasher. “Mathew's the one who got torn into halves, but it was Harry that we feared might go all to pieces.” He grinned at his own turn of phrase. “Oh, aren't I quick with the words? Mathew would have laughed to hear that one; he was always a man for a joke.” He peered at his pipe and poked at the bowl. “Harry's a strange sort of nut. A hard one to crack. First time I saw him was at Pegwell Bay, when I came down with Mathew to get on the boat.”
He rambled on, but I hardly listened. At last I'd found a bit of hope, like a candle in the darkness. “There's only one I can't vouch for,” the captain had said, and he must have meant Harry. Then surely it was Harry who had come to me with a warning. And maybe, I thought, it was he who had found the book. “The dead man's secrets. Mind you keep them safe.”
“Harry was a tubman once,” Dasher said. “Mathew was in the black guard.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Just what I'm saying. A tubman carries the tubs, the barrels. The black guard stands watch in case the revenue show up.” He tapped his pipe on the capstan. “There's hardly a man in Kent hasn't been one or the other. When a smuggling run comes in, there's work for everyone.”
“It's foul-hearted work,” I said.
“It's the free trade,” cried Dasher. “And it's all that keeps us going. You'll see for yourself soon enough. The deacons will come to carry the tubs. The masons will come, and the carpenters too. Why, the doctor himself will come for his share.”
It was true. I'd seen them written down in Larson's book, farmers and bakers and herdsmen.
“And what do you do,” I asked, “when you're not busy smuggling?”
“I rob coaches,” said Dasher.
I stiffened beside him. My old suspicions came back in an instant: the sound of his laugh, the way he moved. “How many have you robbed?” I asked.
“Oh, dozens,” he said. “Two or three a night sometimes. Why, not a fortnight ago I stopped the coach on the road from Ashford.”
I had passed through there with my father on the night he was shot. But any thought I had that Dasher might admit to being the highwayman vanished when he spoke again.
“I got away with pounds and pounds,” he boasted. “There was a lady there–a princess, she said she was-– a real Bartholomew doll fairly dripping with jewels. I plucked them from her like plums from a pudding. I stuffed my pockets, John, and the law came riding after me. I could hear them coming with horses and hounds. I looked back.”
Dasher glanced over his shoulder, into the fog by the bowsprit. “They were only yards behind, trying to follow my trail by the emeralds and pearls that fell from my pockets. But it started raining, and the blasted jewels all melted away. They were only paste; she wasn't a real princess at all.”
His story was nothing but fancy. Paste jewels were no softer than real ones; rain would never melt them. But Dasher swept himself up in the tale and seemed to gallop on the capstan with a breeze in his hair.
“I made my escape by the skin of my teeth,” he said. “I rode all the way to York, until the horse–my faithful horse–burst its little heart. And even stone-cold dead it kept on going; a quarter mile it ran like that.”
He grinned at me. “There! That's a fine tale for my book, don't you think?” He put his pipe in his mouth and took it out again. “The horse was called Clementine.”
“That's rubbish,” I said.
His happiness faded away; I'd snuffed it out like a candle flame. “You don't believe it?” he asked.
“It's a pack of lies. And so are you,” I said. “All you do is make up stories to make yourself seem grand.”
There was another thump from the deck below us, but I barely heard it, and Dasher not at all. He stared down at his hands as they fiddled with the pipe.
“You're not a highwayman,” I said. “You're nothing but a smuggler.”
I meant it cruelly, but Dasher took it as a compliment. “I am that anyway,” he said. “Aren't I?”
“And you always were,” said I. “The captain told me you were pinned under a box when you were just a boy. Tobacco, was it? Or tea?”
“Something heavy, whatever it was,” he said. Then he looked up, grinning again. “But I'll tell you this; I'm the king of all the smugglers! Why, I've killed a dozen men with nothing but my hands.”
To my surprise, Captain Crowe shouted out, “And ye'11 have your chance to kill one more.” He appeared from the stern and not the hold, walking from the fog with a heavy thud of boots.
Dasher stood up from the capstan. “Are we going in?”
“Aye,” said Crowe. “Make sail.” Then he turned to me. “It's your last chance, Mr. Spencer. Will you be giving me that book, then?”
“I can't,” said I.
“Och, ye're a brave lad,” he said, “but a fool. It means the end for ye. And the end for the Dragon as well.” He turned away, shouting at Dasher, calling for Harry. “Jib and main-sail! Arm your lead and cat the anchor. And keep an eye out for that cutter; she won't have gone waltzing awa'.”
Chapter 14
THE COAST IS CLEAR
I wasn't asked to work the ship, and I offered no help. The sails went streaming up, and the Dragon gathered way. Dasher and Harry together could hardly hoist the anchor from its bed. Long before they had it hanging at the cathead, we were clear of the fog and fetching England on a reach.
The moon was but a sliver, like the white of a thumbnail, yet Crowe cursed its light. All three of the men watched for the cutter to come out of the fog, or out from the shadows of shore
. But none watched so hard as I. Crowe, in a jacket now, was as black as the land, and his head seemed to float in the night, turning this way, then that, as we sailed down the path of the moon.
Astern the sea was speckled with silver, but ahead it was dark. The scattered lights of a village seemed far away until I saw the pale lines of the cliffs below them and realized we were much closer to land than I'd thought.
The mainsail sheet was eased and the boom swung wide, spilling wind in a flutter of canvas. One by one the village lights vanished as the cliff rose high above us.
Captain Crowe fumbled below his jacket. “There's no waiting any longer,” said he, and pulled a pistol from his waist. He cocked the hammer. He swung out his arm and pointed the thing at me. “Turn around,” he told me. I felt a rush of fear until I saw it had no barrel.
He snapped at me. “Turn around, I telt ye. The flash will blind ye otherwise. Look for an answer from shore.”
I heard the click of the hammer. A sharp blue light glared against the rigging and the rail. And a moment later, high on the cliff not half a mile ahead, I saw a ball of gold as a lantern was opened and swung in a lazy arc.
It took me back in an instant to the wreck of the Isle of Skye. Mysterious lights on a hazardous shore; the same aw-ful thrill of danger and excitement. But then, I had thought the lights were leading me to safely, and this one meant only peril. I watched the light but did not speak.
Then Dasher shouted. “There!” he cried. “The coast is clear.”
Crowe, in the moonlight, smiled. As well he might, I thought. Despite myself, I had to admire a man who could sail circles in a blinding fog, then come from it hours later within half a mile of the place he sought. My father had measured Crowe's skills right to the penny, though when it came to gauging character, he'd been abysmal.
The captain put his pistol away and turned the Dragon to follow the shore. Whoever it was that stood on the cliff showed us the lantern in brief little flashes. And soon the Dragon swung toward it.
“We're on the spot,” said Crowe. “Now tak'your soundings, Dasher. And sing out when it's sand that ye're finding.”
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